BREAK HELPS HARRY

Taylor pain free and ready to make an impact

HARRY Taylor knows there are things in life far worse than a dodgy foot, but finally he has confidence the troubles he has carried all year have passed.

Taylor is quick to point out he has had a charmed run with injury in his 232-game career, having never played fewer than 21 games in any of his previous 10 seasons.

Tonight, he returns for only his fourth game of the year, this time, though, without a functioning plantar fascia.

After taking off for a sprint at training following the Round 9 match against Essendon, Taylor ruptured the band of tissue in his foot that had caused him grief all season.

This, though, turned out to be a good rupture: the tear relieved the pressure in the foot, stopped the pulling on the bone, eventually took away the pain, started the recovery process and hastened the return. It was the method Robert Harvey supposedly used when he jumped off a table in an act of despair to rid himself of chronic foot pain.

“I’m feeling much better,” Taylor said. “I don’t have that constant pain that I was putting up with prior to completely rupturing it.”

The key defender last night detailed his almost year-long battle with the condition.

Even during pre-season, things were not quite right as he dealt with plantar fasciitis.

It did not restrict him too much, but it hung around.

There were days when he would wake up sore, improve as the day went on, train without much of a worry and then feel a bit of pain at night when things started cooling down.

Then it came unstuck early in Round 1 against Melbourne.

“When I tore it (against the Demons), it tore longitudinally, which is along the length of the plantar fascia, as opposed to a rupture, which is straight across,” he said.

“In a lot of ways, the rupture actually relieves the tension.”

He came back for the Collingwood match in Round 8, played the Bombers game, still not at 100 per cent, before it snapped completely at training days later.

“In some ways, it was good at relieving the pain that I’ve been putting up with for quite a while,” Taylor said.

“But you’ve got to be mindful that your foot mechanics are also a

bit different because you don’t have a plantar fascia that is acting the normal way that it would, so getting used to that is a little bit different.

“It’s feeling really good now and hopefully I can have an influence in the back end of the season.

“I don’t have that constant pain I was putting up with.”

Taylor said he tried to keep perspective during his injury lay-off.

“I am very excited. It has been a little bit different to the past 10 years before this year,” he said.

“It’s been a bit stop-start and I have not been able to get the continuity that I have been used to.

“But there are a lot more players worse off than I am and I’ve worked through all that, making sure I’ve kept perspective.

“I’ve been mixing with the rehab (department) and understanding how part of the football club works a bit better. “All these things are silver linings to what has been an up-and-down start for

me.”